


Limerence

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drift Hangover, Dubious Consent, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Times Herc Hansen had sex with his co-pilot, and times he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limerence

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sense Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006848) by [Vongchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild). 



> This is the all-Hansencest creep alternate universe fic inspired by [this amazing, amazing fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1006848) about Stacker and Tamsin getting it on, Drift dubcon style. 
> 
> And uh, if the words "all-Hansencest creep alternate universe" didn't tip you off, this is not a nice fic. Like, this is an exceptionally un-nice fic. Like. If you have sexual assault triggers, you may want to reconsider reading this fic.

1\. 

Behind closed doors, every Ranger has a story or two or three or five about fucking his or her copilot. When the Hansens qualify in a Mark I, Caitlin Lightcap flat-out warns them about it. They've made significant strides with both radiation shielding and what she calls the _reduction of post-Drift limerence_. Post-Drift limerence is a specific subtype of ghost drifting, and if this is something they can't handle, they need to let the program know. Once they're piloting, if it turns out to be something that they have problems dealing with, they need to let command know. 

Herc and Scott look at each other, mentally compare what Lightcap is telling them against scuttlebutt, and decide they want to kill kaiju: the first time Herc finds himself kissing Scott in shared quarters, they've been drinking. Scott yanks his hand out of Herc's trousers, then looks down. Then goes wash his hand off. Herc gets his breathing under control.

Over the years, they work things out. Lockable doors. Not getting drunk together. Scott going his own way after group dinner while Herc hits the gym to burn off excess adrenaline, then goes home, takes a shower, and enjoys the three hours or so every six months that he and his son can spend time together without fighting. Stacker admits, one night, when they've both had a lot of beers, that he and Tamsin slipped a couple times. She didn't even _like_ men. 

2.

In 2017, they're fresh off killing HK-12 as part of a three-team drop. The Wei-Tang triplets are on base, ready to step into the functionally complete Crimson Typhoon: the first triple-piloted Jaeger in history, so unless absolutely necessary, command wants every single avenue, every single test, every single protocol followed before she goes out. In the end, they don't need Crimson Typhoon: Tacit Ronin and Lucky Seven and Nova Hyperion handle the 2000 ton beast on their own. Kaori Jessop is lead pilot in Tacit, and Herc likes her -- smart woman, smart pilot, smart sense of humor. His age, not a baby like the Nova pilots or the Crimson pilots, who are down at the end of the hall, yelling and laughing. 

A good looking woman. 

Towards the end of the dining period, she comes by their table and puts her arm around Scott's shoulders -- place is mostly empty, and this would be the point when Herc usually heads off to the gym and Scott heads off to find a woman who wants him. Then, though, Karoi Jessop comes up to Scott. She says a few words in his ear, and Scott consider for a moment, then shrugs. "Sure," he says.

So Kaori leans over the table and says, conversationally, "I hear the two of you have post-Drift limerence."

Her accent makes it so that Herc has to think for a moment before he figures out what the word is, but when he does, he feels rooted to his seat. 

"Your husband fine with this?" Scott asks. 

"We've got a deal," she says, and to prove it to them, while her arm is still around Scott's shoulders, she waves to him at the other end of the hall. He waves back at her, then goes back to chatting with his ground crew. Kaori turns back to the Hansens, smiling a little. "I like sex after a fight," she says. "He doesn't." 

Chuck is off at the Academy, so what excuse does Herc have for turning it down? No publicity, no bars, it's another Ranger who understands and came looking for them -- Herc loses track of how many times he comes that night. He has a blurred memory of what combination of hands and mouths and bodies bring him to that point; the usual prickle of post-Drift limerence that he has to run out of his system blooms into a flood of lust, like he's sixteen again and has just discovered sex with Angie, except instead of getting hard every time he catches a whiff of her hair or sneaks a look down her shirt, it's every time Scott touches him, every time Scott kisses him. Every time he touches Scott. Every time he kisses Scott. Kaori understands, and the way she smiles with her hand around Herc's dick brings up a separate, but equally pleasurable kind of heat: she pushes Herc down between her legs and opens her own mouth for Scott. 

Eight months later, Tacit Ronin is dead, killed by a Category-3 while defending Yokohama. Nova Hyperion avenges the Jessops by almost severing the kaiju in half, but what does that change? Dead is dead is dead. 

3.

Scott comes back for his things. There aren't a lot of them: they're Jaeger pilots, after all, moving from Shatterdome to Shatterdome. He stuffs his clothes into a duffel, and Herc knows he could have found a way to not be there, to have pretended that something else was keeping him busy, but when you have your brother kicked out of the Corps for rape -- some part of Herc says he should be there to look Scott in the eye. 

"You weren't complaining when you were on my dick," Scott snarls. "Who are you going to be piloting with and fucking after this, brother? Your _son_?" 

Herc doesn't say anything back, and he watches Scott slam the door behind him. In fact, Herc stays in his chair, stays so still that the motion sensors in the room turn off, and he sits in the dark, not moving, barely breathing, trying to tell himself that -- 

4a.

It's one thing to fuck your adult brother. 

It's another thing to fuck your seventeen year old son, even if he steps into the Jaeger eyes as open as any seventeen year boy can be if his mother was murdered by a combination of kaijus or governmental failure to stop kaijus: how many cross-generational Jaeger pairs are there? Damn few, and for good reason. Herc warns Chuck, and the head of Sydney LOCCENT warns Chuck. Herc asks Stacker to have a couple words because his little shit of a son doesn't listen to anyone, but he might still have some base respect left for the only pilot to run solo combat and survive. 

At the end, Chuck says, in his bitter, edged way, that he knows. Everybody at the Academy knows. He's lived in Shatterdomes for the past five years, so he knows what Rangers get up to, yeah? The two of them run strong and clean in the Drift, and the kaiju are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The world needs pilots in the fastest, most advanced Jaeger built. 

It isn't so bad after simulation runs. It's something about being in Striker -- the memory of all those times he got laid with Scott? The thought burns a hole in Herc's gut, and after every time they step into a Jaeger, whether they fight a kaiju or not, he hits the gym afterwards and makes himself run and run and run on legs that are sometimes already wobbly from some of the most intense cardio activity on the planet. Herc runs. Elliptical. Weights. Circuit after circuit until his arms and legs are shaking, and it shows up in profile articles about how dedicated, how intensely devoted Herc Hansen is to the Jaeger program. 

For his part, Chuck, at seventeen, can walk into any bar in any bar near any Shatterdome in the world and get laid. He makes a habit of staying out all night, and that works as well as any part of their relationship does. The Drift memories from the nigths are always girls, always older than Chuck, always willing and enthusiastic to show the hero Ranger a good time. Breasts, legs, hair, sequined dresses. Cheap perfume. Chuck is usually drunker than the girls are, and Herc simultaneously resents and is glad for the fact his son wants him to see this. 

Once in a while, though, -- 

4b. 

Once in a while, Herc catches a memory of Chuck, down on his knees with older men in hotel rooms, married men, usually inlanders making a trip to the shore for business reasons. They have no reason to recognize the new generation of Rangers on sight. Consequently, beige carpets and the glimpse of seams on suit trousers, polished shoes that are almost, but not quite as shiny as Herc used to wear with his dress uniform when he was with the RAAF. Chuck's tongue, wet against expensive fabric, then raising his head up to say that the man doesn't need to know his fucking name, because he's just fine with _son_. 

Chuck isn't proud of those memories, but they show up in the Drift anyways. When they do, Herc skips the locker room after the techs take him out of the Driftsuit. Instead, he hits the gym and makes himself run five kilometers, ten kilometers if the world hasn't started swimming at five, then climb onto the elliptical. He stays out of the locker room until Chuck is well out and on his way to a bar in the town. Precautions on top of precautions, will on top of will, and Herc doesn't know if it's Drift echo or Drift sickness or something else: all these precautions, and one night, he still comes to outside Chuck's door. His knuckles hurt from banging against the metal, and it's three o' clock in the morning. Hound was less than six hours before, so it buys him some leeway, some politeness.

The neighbor on Chuck's right hand side has her head stuck out of her door. She sees him blinking, and she repeats herself. Chuck left around nine, hasn't been back, sorry, Mr. Hansen. 

5\. 

They get orders for Hong Kong, and Chuck plays a line about looking forward to fun in a free port: he might actually believe it, but Herc tells him about Operation Pitfall. What does Chuck think they're going to Hong Kong for? After landing, after the briefing at K-Science, Striker's ground crew loads parameters onto one of Conn-POD and takes them through a drill. It's clean, not even a hint of salt spray damage or neural degradation in the relays, not even a blurred glimpse of breath against wool or a beige carpet. They disconnect, shower, and go to the canteen. Herc exchanges words with Raleigh, and Herc tries to apologize for his son. Afterwards, he finds Stacker again and they talk. Catch up about Mako, mostly, and Stacker makes tea for both of them. Herc admires the view out of the window. 

Five hours later, Herc wakes up underneath Chuck: his quarters, bare and spare, Chuck on top of him. Herc is naked below the waist, bent over the edge of his bed. Chuck's voice is in his ear, calling him _dad_ , but otherwise using, word for word, the words he heard in a hotel room in Long Beach and that Herc felt in the Drift the last time they were in Manila. The hand on the back of Herc's neck, holding his face against the mattress, is from that Long Beach hotel room, too. 

Herc calls Chuck's name a few times and swallows hard against the heat radiating out from the hand that Chuck has on the back of his neck. The air is cold against, and Chuck keeps the hand there, goes on talking, and Herc holds still until he hears Chuck unzipping. He says Chuck's name one more time. Chuck goes on holding him by the neck, so Herc swings up with his right elbow and nails Chuck in the gut, rolls onto his side, then back onto his feet and pulls his fist back. 

When Chuck comes to himself, gasping on the floor, his face goes white. 

"Get out," Herc says. He has trousers pulled on and is doing the belt. To Chuck's credit, he zips up, face still white as a sheet. He tries something like an apology, but can't choke the sounds out of his throat, and staggers out. 

They only Drift once after that.

6\. 

What does Chuck say into Herc's ear in that half-minute they're on the bed? In the beginning, they're words from the hotel room in Long Beach, a businessman telling Chuck how he's going to fuck him, how he's going to split his son wide open -- Chuck swaps out the _son_ and puts in _dad_ , and a cold ball forms in Herc's stomach to counteract the heat going down his body. Even after all these years, he still gets Drift limerence. 

Towards the end, though, when Chuck is unzipping, things change. The accent shifts, and Herc hears an accent that's closer to Chuck's usual mix of half-a-dozen Shatterdomes: _I'm good at this,_ Chuck says. _I'll make you feel good, and you'll be proud. You'll call me son._

In the end, in the hallway, Herc can't manage the words about pride, but he does call Chuck his son.

**Author's Note:**

> The first line of this and the bit about Stacker admitting to Herc that he and Tamsin slipped up a couple times are straight from a chat window with [Vongchild](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild), who also pointed out Kaori's correct last name. The lines where Chuck is saying about getting Herc to call him son by dicking him? I mean, who the fuck else could come up with something as exceptionally messed but [destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics)?
> 
> And yeah, this is AU mostly because I CAN'T THINK ABOUT HERC HANSEN THIS SAD IN CANON. I CANNOT. I REFUSE.


End file.
